30 September 2012 Edition

Pensioners in the firing line

Labour takes up the discreditable baton of Ernest ‘Shilling off the Pension’ Blythe

Pensioners protest against Medical Card cuts under Fianna Fáil

» Eoin Ó Murchú

Taxes paid by pensioners provided Government advisers with the education used to advance them to positions where they now demand that pensioners take a cut

THE Fine Gael/Labour Government is firmly putting pensioners
and the elderly in general in the firing line in respect of further social
welfare cuts being planned in the next budget.

Irish pensioners won some significant benefits over the
years, including reasonable basic pensions, along with free travel, free
television licence and fuel and phone allowances.

It should be emphasised, however, that the basic state
pension of €230 a week will only allow a pensioner to exist: it provides no
cushion for luxuries or other special expenditures, even with the benefits
package taken into account.

It should be further emphasised that those in receipt of the
contributory pension have, as it says on the tin, CONTRIBUTED to their pension
over the years, through PRSI and social insurance payments, together with the
taxes paid to provide Government advisers with the education used to advance
them to positions where they now demand that pensioners take a cut.

Eamon Gilmore’s Labour Party may play pretend to have
‘clashes’ with Fine Gael on this issue but Joan Burton has not denied that
pensioners’ payments and entitlements are in the firing line.

The first steps in this campaign may be modest enough — such
as a proposed €5 fee for each proposed long-distance travel — but this will
just be the thin end of the wedge.

Already fuel allowances have been reduced, more reductions
are on the way, cuts in pensions are planned, and further means tests will
eliminate universal entitlements under a spurious claim that the expenditure
should be targeted at those who need it.

The point is that the “well-off” pensioners who Minister of
State Brian Hayes refers to can be taxed: those who can afford to pay for their
own care, can afford, through taxation, to make a contribution to everybody’s.
That’s the democratic way.

It is ironic that all of the pensioners’ benefits which
Labour are now targeting were brought in by Fianna Fáil governments. Ironic
indeed that Labour should take up the discreditable baton of Ernest ‘Shilling
Off the Pension’ Blythe and be the party to cut them.

Labour’s excuse is that we have no choice because we don’t
have the money. But this is a lie. We seem to have the money to pay the banks,
to pour billions into making sure that European speculators don’t lose out.

We could and should take a leaf out of Iceland’s book and
put our people before the banks. Iceland refused to pay the foreign banks, rode
out their anger, and is now back in the international markets and back to high
levels of growth — to the consternation of the IMF and the confusion of those
who have no policy but to appease the Euro bosses.

Pensioners are not the only ones being threatened, but a
series of softening up articles in the national press – especially by Stephen
Collins in The Irish Times – shows that they are in the frontline for the cuts
now being planned.

The time to start the fight against this is now, not when
the cuts are introduced. And the time for Labour dissidents to make a reality
of their opposition to what is going on is now, not after the event when weasel
words will be no help to those being pushed further into the black pit of
poverty.